Free The Spoiler by Domenic Stansberry Page A

dealers all in one breath. Angelo’s popularity grew, and as it did, so did the size of the Latinos. He set up Latino patrols to protect storekeepers, to watch the streets at night, to try to stop the fires that, despite everything, still burned. In the process a street war broke out between the Latinos and a rival gang, the Wanderers.
    Angelo’s credibility became tarnished, however, after a street battle that left three young men dead on the street. Afterward Holyoke’s mayor called the incident “tragic, barbaric” and made a public appeal—directed mostly at Angelo—for both street gangs to disband, to join the community, to let the police patrol the streets.
    In full battle gear, scarves flying, chains hanging from their belts, knives sheathed at their sides, Angelo and a half dozen Latinos stormed into the next City Council meeting. Angelo took the platform and addressed the people in the auditorium. His people would not disband, he said, not ever.
    â€œIf you lived in our houses, in our streets, in our tenements—in our city that is burning—then you know why we can’t disband. People like Mayor Rafferty say that it’s all accident, all vandalism, simply our own people destroying ourselves and our homes. Would you burn your own homes?… The police, the white businessmen, the neighborhood crooks and thieves—like the Wanderers—they’re the ones who gain. It’s a system.”
    Lofton looked at the newspaper photo Einstein had taken of Angelo at the meeting. The gang leader stood on the platform, legs straddled wide, his finger pointing at the audience.
    â€œWe know who’s burning our city, and we won’t stop our war until they’ve been stopped. And those who think they’re too powerful to be punished—we’ll drag them down, too. That’s why the politicians want us to disband and why the police are afraid of us.”
    Afterward the mayor had dismissed Angelo as “a fringe lunatic—a low-rent Al Capone trying to pass himself off as Che Guevera. We can’t let him terrorize us.” Then he announced that the Wanderers, the rival street gang, had agreed to throw off their colors and disband. He called on the Latinos to ignore their leader and do the same.
    A few nights later, after walking out of a corner grocery store, Angelo had been shot twice in the head. He’d taken a bodyguard along with him to the store, but the Latinos did not carry guns, only knives. Both Angelo and his guard died at the scene. The store owner hadn’t seen the murderer, he said; he didn’t know anything about it. The two Latinos bought cigarettes, walked outside; then they were dead. “That’s all I know,” said the owner, “and all I want to know.”
    After Angelo’s death Einstein did a story on the gang leader’s funeral, and then that was it. Einstein’s by-line disappeared from the Dispatch in early July, just before Lofton had got to town. Since then the paper had run little else about the Latinos or the Wanderers. Lofton now realized, thinking back on what Mendoza had said about taking off his colors, that he should go back and press Mendoza harder on the status of the rivalry, try to get to the bottom of what had happened between the two gangs, and see how it related to the fires.
    Late one afternoon Lofton left the library for a while, taking a walk to clear his head. When he returned, the librarian approached him.
    â€œDid your friend catch up to you?” asked the librarian, a shy, thin woman who tried hard to smile when she spoke.
    â€œFriend?” Lofton said. He did not understand what she meant.
    â€œYes, he asked how you were coming along with the project. And he asked what papers you were looking at.” The woman’s smile faltered.
    â€œOh, yes,” he said. “Right.” He still had no idea what she meant.
    â€œGood,” the woman said, her smile firm